Running with the Storm

Zine
Title:	Running with the Storm
Publisher:	AMC Press
Editor:
Author(s):	Serena
Cover Artist(s):	TACS
Illustrator(s):
Date(s):	March 1999
Medium:	print
Size:
Genre:
Fandom:	The Sentinel
Language:	English
External Links:	WBM link to Running with the Storm on Serena's Geocities site
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cover by TACS

Running with the Storm is a 194-page slash Sentinel novel by Serena.

The cover and inside art is by TACS.

It was first published by AMC Press in 1999. In 2018, it was reissued in print and PDF by Requiem Publications.

Summary

From the publisher's flyer:

This is an alternate universe where Jim doesn't meet Blair until after the female bomber, where he is injured. As he recovers, he keeps dreaming of a young man with long hair who will help him with sensory problems he is starting to have. When he finally meets Blair, it's only to discover that that student is leaving in a few weeks for a 6-month expedition in the Peruvian jungle. Jim says that they can pick up with the testing when Blair returns. Unfortunately, 4 weeks into the expedition, all the students on the trip are captured by drug runners, who say they will only release the students when a prisoner is released to them. Jim doesn't wait for politics to work, so donning his Jungle Jim outfit, he heads for Peru. There he finds all the students were released except one - as a safety measure for the drug runners...of course it's Blair. Now the panther comes out and leads Jim to his prize...to the misfortune of the captors.

Sample Interior

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Reactions and Reviews

If ever there was a zine that felt like a tragedy, it was this one. I desperately wanted to like this zine, to love it even. It had a fascinating story line that was engrossing: Jim doesn’t meet Blair until after Blair’s apartment blows up. He’d been having dreams of Blair, that he could help Jim with his senses. Revealing his secret to Blair, the student is elated to meet living proof of his research, but sadly informs Jim that he’s leaving for an expedition to Peru. Once there, Blair is abducted by drug runners, and Jim comes to his rescue. Fleeing to a sacred temple, a vision brings Sentinel and Guide together. Come morning, though, Blair explains away their experience as a trance-induced state, insisting they aren’t gay, that it won’t happen again. A broken-hearted Jim agrees in order to not frighten Blair away, and returns to Cascade to watch his Guide move in with him yet continue to date co-eds left and right. And that’s the first third of the novel!

As I was saying, an engrossing premise. This novel could have been worthy of two stars, with a bit of serious effort even three. The reason it didn’t achieve this is the tragedy. This story reads like it has not been edited at all. It was spell-checked, but even that was done haphazardly, since the word ‘believe’ is substituted for the word ‘belief’ throughout the entire zine. And spell check doesn’t catch the multitude of grammar/spelling/punctuation errors. It doesn’t catch missing words and horrific changes in verb tense and voice within sentences. For this reason, reading this story was torture. It was difficult, painstaking work to follow the narrative. It was so hard to read that I considered giving this zine a ‘skull and crossbones’ rating, but the story itself didn’t deserve that.

With a simple good beta reading, this zine would have been given two stars, since I feel it would have been a damn good read. With an intense edit by at least two beta readers it could have become a classic Sentinel slash story worthy of three stars. Content-wise, the last third of the zine felt rushed, as if the author was in a hurry to finish and lost the characters’ voices. A good edit could have fixed that.

I feel I can’t blame the author, Serena, for this near-miss of a zine. She’s a talented storyteller with a lot of promise. I hope she continues writing and perfecting her style. The fault lies with the publishers, AMC Press. If you are going to publish a zine and expect Net fen to pay money for it, you should at least give them well-edited material. See my review of AMC Press, which I was inspired to write after reading this zine.